“The Obama administration is ratcheting up its economic war against Iran ahead of nuclear talks slated for Kazakhstan later this month. Last week, the White House announced a new expansion of sanctions that pressure countries buying Iran’s oil to withhold direct payments and instead force Iran to purchase their goods. The Treasury also widened the sanctions list to include Iranian state media. We’re joined by Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and author of the new book “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran.” Back in the United States after testifying before the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Iran’s nuclear program, Parsi says: “In spite of [the sanctions], you’re not seeing the regime change its nuclear calculus. And I would say that that’s mainly because pressure alone will not work. There has to be negotiations in which something is put on the table that is viewed as strategically valuable by the other side. Only then will we be able to really say that diplomacy has been tested.”

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4 Responses

Again, the symmetry of asymmetry. There is no war between the US and Iran. What we have is the US working hard to destroy the Iranian economy and seriously harm the well being of its citizens – sort of the economic equivalent of invasion and occupation.

In a way a bit worse, because if we invaded and occupied, it would be our responsibility to to assure the well being of the citizenry. With sanction we don’t ever have to take any responsibility for the damage done (no hand wringing about the eleven year Iraq sanctions).

So what is left to bargain about? We tell Iran to capitulate to whatever our demands are or the sanctions will continue, and potentially morph into a military attack on the country. Iran must accept that it is a pariah among nations, so distrusted that it cannot have sovereignty over its use of nuclear energy.

Same old story about the hobnail boot complaining about the throat it’s stepping on.

“The Obama administration is ratcheting up . . . the White House announced a new. . .”

I believe the increased sanctions resulted from a law passed by the Congress and signed by the president at the last legal opportunity. The U.S. still has some semblance of democracy, and (thanks to expert propaganda) the people acting through their representatives want to stick it to those dastardly dangerous Iranians.

The efforts of Israel and its US supporters and the Obama administration to institute crippling sanctions on Iran may have less to do with a potential nuclear capability than with the effort by Israel to manage the configuration and distribution of power in its sphere if influence.
The takedown of Saddam Hussein by the US in 2003 and the dismantlement of its military left Iran unopposed by a comparable military adversary, and, ultimately resulted in a neighboring state whose officials enjoyed close ties to Iran and whose government was dominated by Shiite Muslims.
In addition, it opened a corridor through which armaments could pass to Syria and through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel’s only significant military challenge in the region is Hezbollah which was formed under the auspices of the Iranian theocracy and which is dependent on Iran for it armaments. Hezbollah is understood, by the Israel government, as a proxy military force of Iran.
The potential of Iranian Shiism to ignite the loyalties of the Shiite minorities in Saudi Arabia and the Shiite majority in Bahrain present a troubling prospect of Israel being surrounded by governments with close ties to Iran and sharing its hostility to Israel.
The energy source that is Israeli hegemonic regional policy driving the US to, first of all attack Iran militarily, or if not that, to institute crippling emasculating sanctions on Iran is engendered by the same motivations that drove the US government to invade Iraq and to destroy both Saddam and his military capacity.
It has very much to do with Israel hegemonic calculus and much less to do with an Iranian nuclear weapon, which the US intelligence agencies, and probably also Israel’s, denies exists.

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